Hoch's Ladies

by Edward D. Hoch, Michael Dirda (Introduction)

Hoch created many series characters, Among them were Dr. Sam Hawthorne, Jeffery Rand, Nick Velvet, Simon Ark, and Alexander Swift. Several series feature women sleuths. Hoch s ladies were often faced with seemingly impossible crimes throat cutting in a locked room, shooting of giant cacti, murder in a giant hot air balloon, stabbing in a shower with no one present, poisoning of Chinese food as a last meal of a murderer, and more ingenious methods that will keep the reader guessing. As John Dickson Carr remarked, Satan himself would be proud of his ingenuity. The introduction is by Michael Dirda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The Washington Post and the author of several books about books, including On Conan Doyle, which received a 2012 Edgar Award from The Mystery Writers of America.

Genres: Mystery

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

Edward D. Hoch is one of the most honored mystery writers of all time.

* 1968 Edgar Allan Poe Award (Mystery Writers of America): "The Oblong Room", The Saint Mystery Magazine, July 1967
* 1998 Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention): "One Bag of Coconuts", EQMM, November 1997
* 2001 Anthony Award (Bouchercon): "The Problem of the Potting Shed", EQMM, July 2000
* 2007 Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award (awarded 2008): "The Theft of the Ostracized Ostrich", EQMM, June 2007
* Lifetime Achievement Award (Private Eye Writers of America), 2000
* Grand Master (Mystery Writers of America), 2001
* Lifetime Achievement Award (Bouchercon), 2001

Reviews

[SJ]

The ladies are just not up to the usual Hoch standards. The Susan Holt stories were a bit silly with a department store executive getting into murderous situations with physical altercations in every story. Too far fetched!

[Puzzle Doctor]

Full review at classicmystery.blog

[Jameson]

4 stars for the content, 0 stars for everything else, even including the cheap looking cover.

Hoch’s Ladies are:

-amateur detective Susan Holt, promotions ace for “Manhattan’s most famous department store,” 11 stories from 1993-2008

-cop-turned-bodyguard Libby Knowles, 3 stories from 1983-1985

-and police detective Annie Sears, 3 stories from 2005-2008

Of these stories, which all appeared in either Ellery Queen’s or Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, the Susan Holt ones are the strongest, both in terms of the character and the plots, and the Annie Sears are the weakest. I wonder why he shelved Libby Knowles? I’d have preferred more time with her than Sears. I could read another dozen Holt stories right now, but, alas, it’s not to be. RIP Hoch, you genius, you.

When I began reading this book I made a decision: no matter how bad the formatting and typos, I will not let it get to me. After all, this is just Hoch’s Ladies! These aren’t Hoch’s Gentlemen, Simon Ark or Dr. Sam Hawthorne. The best laid plans…

I only first really heard about Hoch a few years ago, when I was running out of Carrs, and so collected a few of his books, both physical and digital, but they mostly languished in my TBR pile while I read higher prioritized fiction. I’d read some of his SF, his Holmes stuff, and a stand-alone mystery novel, but I never read what he was most known for, his short fiction. His series detectives. Until finally I read Simon Ark. Every story I could get my hands on. (I still have eBay searches saved for some of the vintage pulp magazines containing the lost Arks.) I’ve read everything currently available. And I was sad when I ran out of Simon Ark.

Then I figured I may as well try the stories of Dr. Sam Hawthorne. I imagined they would be decent, at best. Something to help cope with having no more Simon Ark. But they were excellent. In fact, probably better. Too soon, I devoured all those stories too. Yes, he had other stories featuring other characters but Simon Ark was like Scooby Doo for grownups and Hawthorne specialized in impossible crimes. There wasn’t likely to be anything else I’d fall in love with.

Enter Susan Holt: promotions ace for NYC’s most famous department store who has a knack for becoming involved in and solving murders. While I’m not head-over-heels with Holt as I am with Ark and Hawthorne, they are very enjoyable stories. Hoch has great plot ideas, interesting and well-researched locations and milieus. Sadly, there’s only eleven of them. So each one is important and deserves respect. See where I’m going with this?

Well, in the final Holt story, in a scene depicting the last conversation between Holt and the only other recurring character in this short series, when Holt is mid-deduction show, the paragraphs become a jumbled mess. The reader can’t tell who is speaking without re-reading half the page a few times. Suspense, gone. Flow, gone. Publisher, you may as well spray my eyes with mace!

The book’s publisher, Crippen & Landru, unfortunately, handle practically all of Hoch’s work. Practically all my favorite fiction, period. Including the other Hoch detectives I am hoping to love too. And I’ve already been through the five stages of grief about this shoddy editing twice by now and I’m still not over it. Clearly.

Susan Holt, like Simon Ark and Sam Hawthorne, deserves better. Once again my whole review hasn’t been about the amazing content but about the amateurish preparation.

Curiously, I almost never see this issue addressed and when it is, it’s often minimized as a minor problem. I disagree completely and I’m sure many diligent editors would be rolling in their graves at the very idea. Although the world is probably spinning on its axis under their own power anyway, given today’s reading habits and publishing practices.

I doubt I own one book published by them in the last 10 years either digital or physical that doesn’t have major formatting errors. Missing quotation marks, extra quotation marks, and of course whackadoodle paragraph formatting: squishing paragraphs together, widows and orphans galore, unnecessary paragraph breaks.

But when you read reviews of C & L publications, these things are usually not mentioned at all. If more people complained, the people at C & L might address the problems. They could get an intern to just read through the manuscripts and at least fix the most egregious stuff! They could just upload those corrected files to ebook stores. Easy! Crippen & Landru publish great content, content from the American pulps that would otherwise be lost, but they do it so carelessly that I wish I had an alternative. They used to have such a good reputation but they seem to have grown completely negligent and have no qualms about putting out substandard, amateurish workmanship. Any other publisher would be called out for this. For shame.

I can only speculate why nobody talks about this elephant in the room. Is the editor cockeyed or something? Does he only have thumbs? What on earth is going on???

[Riju Ganguly]

Edward D. Hoch, apart from being one of the most prolific authors of our times, stands out as one of the finest practioners of the classic fair-play mysteries. This particular colllection contains some of the best specimens of 'locked room' or 'impossible' type of crimes penned by him. Speciality of this collection is that the mystery-solving protagonists are women.
Eleven mysteries are solved by Susan Holt, where she somehow gets mixed up (once even arrested) while performing duties as an executive of a large Departmental Store.
Three mysteries are solved by Libby Knowles while she acts as a professional bodyguard.
Three cases are solved by Annie Sears, Police Detective.
But all these cases rise above the usual stories because of the attention paid towards minute details of life across a multitude of places. They vividly bring the characters to life, with warts and all. And the protagonists are refreshingly honest in their weaknesses and strengths. This is something which is a rarity in genre fiction, as anybody would admit. And Hoch keeps excelling in that again & again & again.
Outstanding book, and an essential read for all mystery-lovers.
Highly recommended.

[Francis]

Edward D. Hoch was a prolific short story writer who contributed numerous short stories to the Ellery Queen mystery magazine. All of the stores in this collection were originally published in the magazine. I have read and enjoyed several of these Hoch short story collections. In this particular case perhaps a bit less than previously. My main complaint is not Hoch's writing ability, it's that I've found myself becoming increasingly tired of single author short story collections in general. The problem for me is there is frequently a pattern or formula to a collection of stories by the same author and they all begin to meld together. Yes, this collection all had surprise twist ending and several quite good, but that was the problem ...they all had twist endings. I don't want to discourage Hoch fans, his stories do tend to stick out (in a good way) in a collection of short stories by different authors. However, for me, on their own, they became too predictable.

[Theunis Snyman]

Hoch was a remarkable man. Although he wrote a few novels his main forte was detective short stories. He wrote over 900 of them under at least 8 names. He created about 14 different detectives. This collection contains stories about his lady detectives. Hoch was a great plotter and his solutions are always ingenious and mostly surprising. What is also surprising is the number of different settings he uses for his stories. Several of these stories also feature an impossible crime of which Hoch was a master.

[Vallery Feldman]

These are pleasant, will not give you nightmares, kind of stories to read before bed.

[Lisa T. Ungerer]

Enjoyed the read

Good short mysteries,written in the 1980's and 90's. A bit dated but still fun to read. Found Susan Holt likeable but not believable. Recommended

[Jeff J.]

A collection of short stories featuring female protagonists from the prolific Hoch.

[Gowri N.]

Period pieces featuring amateur women detectives solving impossible crimes while also working their main jobs as promotions managers and bodyguards and beat cops. All American in ways good and bad. 3.5 stars rounded up.